


Like Staring Down The Barrel of a Gun

by zigostia



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Character Study, Drabble, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-19
Updated: 2020-04-19
Packaged: 2021-03-02 05:22:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,604
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23729743
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zigostia/pseuds/zigostia
Summary: When people meet Sherlock, they make two major assumptions about him. One: that he’s an asshole. Two: that he’s a sociopath.Both of those, John knows, are excruciatingly wrong.
Relationships: Sherlock Holmes/John Watson
Comments: 39
Kudos: 117





	Like Staring Down The Barrel of a Gun

When people meet Sherlock, they make two major assumptions about him. One: that he’s an asshole. Two: that he’s a sociopath. 

Both of those, John knows, are excruciatingly wrong.

Because John was there when the two of them collapsed at the bottom of a stairwell, giggling like two schoolchildren, faces flushed and chests heaving to catch their breath. He was there when Sherlock’s eyes searched for John’s in a dingy, low-lighted swimming pool, hands rock-steady and gaze filled with absolution, spilling over the brim with a flood of (lovetrustfear) emotions so intense it made his breath stutter, his pounding heart skipping a single beat. He was there when Sherlock grinned up at him through long, thick lashes over a dinner of the best food John had ever tasted, that had nothing to do with the food itself and everything to do with the company. He was there when Sherlock crowded him against a filthy alleyway wall and kissed him so hard and fast it made his knees weak, slow-melting into soft, soft, soft kisses, one after the other, each speaking their own song of devotion and passion loud enough for John’s blood to turn to cherry wine, hot and sweet and heady.

They don’t take interviews. Not if they can help it. Not after the interviewer had shoved the microphone into both their faces and interrogated, pushed, _beat_ words into their minds of _emotionless, cruel, vacant machine._ (Not her words verbatim, but it rang out loud and clear for all of them to hear beneath the coy, subtle hints of press vocabulary.)

When people speak to Sherlock, they see the glint of hard diamond in his eyes and the detached tone in his voice. They read about the way he shoots without hesitation, the time he put eighteen bullets through a man who was dead after the third. They don’t ever stick around long enough to watch the way he smoothed back the hair of a shivering child, halfway to shock in some disgusting fucker’s basement, pushing back damp curls to press a hard, fierce kiss to his forehead. They never get to hear his low, rough voice singing his mother’s favourite song, over and over, growing hoarse, until John’s tears ebbed and he stopped shaking, twisted in blankets reeking of fear and nightmares and hot desert sand.

“I should’ve been better,” he tells John sometimes, in those rare moments where he isn’t fast enough, isn’t clever enough, voice heavy like penance and dark as death. “Should’ve figured it out sooner. People are dead because of me.” In these moments, his eyes look haunted, carrying the weight of a thousand souls saved, and a dozen dead.

“People are alive because of you,” John tells him, and wonders how on Earth anyone could mistake this brilliant, glowing bundle of limitless devotion and fearless, violent care for anything else.

One morning, John woke to find the kitchen half-burned, smoke rolling out the window in thick, black plumes. The fire alarm had been dismantled, lying in neat little parts on the floor, and in the middle of the dining table stood a pile of something that mildly resembled human flesh. It was, in fact, a German chocolate cake, with lots and lots of pecans because that was John’s favourite. Sherlock was curled up in the corner of the sofa, with a phone tucked in the nook of his neck and both hands free, fingers flying over the laptop in front of him. He was placing a custom-order cake from the best patisserie in a fifty-mile radius. Simultaneously, he was on the victory lap of a heated eBay bid for a signed copy of the Lord of the Rings series, John’s favourite childhood novels. 

Upon hearing John come downstairs, he typed something, pressed the _Enter_ button with a dramatic air of triumph, spoke into the phone, “Ten percent bonus if you can get it here by noon,” and glanced up to smile at him. “Hello, John,” he said. “Happy birthday.”

The only person second to John who saw past Sherlock’s sleet-slick mask was probably Mrs. Hudson, who brought them tea and hand-baked biscuits with an affectionate smile as she watched Sherlock duck his head down to give John his afternoon kiss, before thanking Mrs. Hudson and complimenting her on her baking.

John remembered knocking on her door one afternoon (an eternity ago), greeting her with an exhausted plea. It had been a few days after that fateful afternoon with Stamford, only a few days after he’d moved in and his world went careening off its axis.

“I need to move out,” he had said. “I can’t do this anymore.”

Mrs. Hudson had pursed her lips, an expression flitting across her face too quickly to pinpoint, but came the closest to disappointment. “And why is that?” she asked him.

“He hates me,” John said. “I—it’s like I can’t do anything right around him. He’s constantly correcting me, telling me what to do, insulting me. I can’t stand it.”

The silence that had followed was thick as treacle and twice as bleak. In his seat, John shifted awkwardly and channeled his frustration through his gaze, hoping that, as the landlady of Sherlock Holmes, she understood his struggle.

He was eternally, forevermore, and infinitely indebted to her for reacting the way she did. That is to say, to pat him on the shoulder and firmly refuse. “Give it a few more weeks,” she had said. “Just until the end of the month.”

“Why?” John had said, frustrated.

An enigmatic flicker of a smile. “I want to see how he changes your mind.”

And—oh, how he had.

Because when Sherlock says _Don’t touch that, you moron,_ he’s saying, _That’s dangerous and I don’t want you to get hurt._ When he says _Wrong, wrong, wrong, are you trying to get us killed,_ he’s saying, _I can’t stand it if anything happens to you._ When he says, _I despise you sometimes, you drive me insane,_ he means, _I love you, too much, all of the time, and it scares me to death._

Letter by letter, John takes Sherlock’s language and takes it apart and learns it all. He grows to understand, to comprehend his silence and draw words from the tense way he holds his shoulders when he’s stressed, to the soft bleed of pain in his eyes when he’s patching John up after a case gone awry.

Their job is dangerous, and Sherlock always dives in head-first, a whirlwind of unstoppable force. He’s always one step ahead of John, physically and metaphorically and all/any other ways possible, shielding him from whatever is yet to come. God forbid anyone come between him and John Watson. His hands never shake when he’s holding a gun, but they tremble over John’s blood like spider’s silk in a breeze.

On bad nights, when they’re both world-weary and stripped to their bones, adrenaline spilled away into the mist, Sherlock curls around John and holds him so close John feels his heartbeat hit his chest. Most of the time, it’s silent, desperation in his actions speaking for themselves. Other times, they bleed out as harsh, murmured words into his skin, damp collarbone warmed with breath. “I hate it when you’re hurt,” he whispers. “Sometimes I wish you were never here.”

“Don’t you want me here?” John breathes back, and feels Sherlock’s hold on him grow stronger, tighten infinitesimally.

“I need you here,” is the inevitable reply. “I need you here, and alive, and safe, and undamaged, and I know that’s impossible, and I hate that so much, John, I hate it so much.”

“Hey,” John says. “Hey. It’s okay. I’m here, Sherlock. It’s alright.”

“John,” Sherlock says, and John quiets him, hushes him, shuts him up with a myriad of kisses until they both drift off to sleep, clinging to each other as easy as breathing. John sometimes feels like his heart was at half-power until Sherlock arrived and gave it the other half it needed to be whole.

When people meet Sherlock, they make two major assumptions about him.

John wishes with every inch of him, every breath and cell, that they could see Sherlock for what he truly was. The way his defences crumbled in the face of a quiet kiss, a gentle caress, a soft _darling_ uttered under the breath.

But he knows, deep down, that that’s not the whole story. As Sherlock reminds him every day, John Watson is the only one for him. Forever and always, he says, with the same certainty in his voice he carries while declaring a cause of death, a confirmed suspect.

And maybe—maybe John can be a little selfish. Maybe he deserves that, for everything the two of them have done, all the cases they’ve put to justice and the people they’ve saved.

Maybe John can hold Sherlock’s hand over the table of a crowded restaurant, and indulge in the feeling that no one else gets to have this. Maybe John can wake up every morning and bask, uninhibited, in untamed curls and bright opal eyes, exchange sleepy smiles that only he’ll ever get to see.

Only he can see those vulnerable moments that Sherlock trusts enough to let slip through his guard of frost and ice. Only he can love Sherlock the way Sherlock loves John.

And maybe, John thinks, as he surreptitiously watches Sherlock from across the table on a rainy Sunday morning, hand tucked into his pocket and fingers clutching, tight and desperate, around a small, black, velvet-lined box—maybe he’s okay with that.

And maybe Sherlock is okay with that, too.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so much for reading! If you enjoyed this late-night rambling, please leave a kudo, or even better, a comment. I love comments _almost_ as much as Sherlock loves John.
> 
> I hope everybody is staying safe in these trying times. Take care <3


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